Changing Minds

As an aspiring professional in the field of space exploration, I firmly believe that allocating funds towards this endeavour is a valuable and worthwhile investment.

In the present day, there is a prevailing belief among young individuals that space exploration is an imprudent expenditure of resources and time, given that everything we seek to comprehend is readily available within our immediate surroundings. Straight-up nonsense. How can this possibly be a waste of money? Science itself means that it is the study of nature. Plus I would refer to a famous saying that "human presence in science is almost the definition of science". This clearly states that if humans are not participating in space exploration, then there is no way we will ever proceed in terms of science since 99.999% of everything we need to know is off-world.

We have explored an extremely minor amount of outer space, 4% to be precise. Space exploration officially began in the year 1957 October 4 when U.S.S.R launched the very first artificial satellite, Sputnik. From that day up to this date, NASA (National aeronautics space administration) and many other space agencies have made countless inventions.

Let me tell you about some of the inventions that were originally made for space travel but are now of great use. In fact, without these inventions life would be hard.

Insulin pumps were originally made for keeping track of an astronaut's vital signs, now insulin pumps are a very important piece of equipment in medicine and are mainly used to help cure diabetes.

Baby formula! It's hard to believe but these were mainly made for long-term space missions and let's not forget how great of a help these formulas are to parents around the globe. Infrared ear thermometers were made for measuring the temperature of faraway planets and during this covid era served as a great help to take people’s temperature.

I’m aware that many people in the audience might think that instead of exploring space we should invest our money in trying to find ways to stop climate change.

You must have heard of Elon Musk, an extremely popular entrepreneur and the founder of space x. In 2016 he proposed the idea of colonizing Mars, mainly because, it has been around 4.5 billion years since the creation of Earth, and who knows what could go wrong in the future, I mean look around there are no dinosaurs anymore! About 65 million years ago a meteor that fell from space wiped out their whole lifeline, the same could happen to us. I am not saying this to scare anyone but these are facts and we should face it! Furthermore, looking ahead to the future, even if we were to achieve the colonization of Mars, it would yield numerous benefits. Notably, in light of the severe agricultural crisis, having an additional habitable planet at our disposal would prove advantageous and more efficient. This expansion would generate more employment opportunities, offer additional living space, alleviate Earth's overpopulation concerns, and provide us with increased agricultural land. Taking these factors into consideration, rethinking the concept of space exploration from this perspective reveals its potential benefits and eliminates any chances of it being a bad idea.

At last, I would just like to add the amazing sayings of Bill Nye an American engineer,

"We are at a time in history when we can change the world. What do we want to pass on to the future generations? We just stayed here on earth, didn't look out to find where we came from, and are we alone? No! We want to pass on this joy. This excitement."